2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God?
O God, thou art my God; earnestly will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, In a dry and weary land, where no water is.
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; My heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God.
Now on the last day, the great `day' of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; And thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: In thy light shall we see light.
One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after; That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of Jehovah, And to inquire in his temple.
But Jehovah is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King: at his wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation.
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: They will be still praising thee. Selah
Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord Jehovah.
For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself:
They go from strength to strength; Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion.
Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat!
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 42
Commentary on Psalms 42 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 42
If the book of Psalms be, as some have styled it, a mirror or looking-glass of pious and devout affections, this psalm in particular deserves, as much as any one psalm, to be so entitled, and is as proper as any to kindle and excite such in us: gracious desires are here strong and fervent; gracious hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, are here struggling, but the pleasing passion comes off a conqueror. Or we may take it for a conflict between sense and faith, sense objecting and faith answering.
The title does not tell us who was the penman of this psalm, but most probably it was David, and we may conjecture that it was penned by him at a time when, either by Saul's persecution or Absalom's rebellion, he was driven from the sanctuary and cut off from the privilege of waiting upon God in public ordinances. The strain of it is much the same with 63, and therefore we may presume it was penned by the same hand and upon the same or a similar occasion. In singing it, if we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here; if not, we must, in singing them, sympathize with those whose case they speak too plainly, and thank God it is not our own case; but those passages in it which express and excite holy desires towards God, and dependence on him, we must earnestly endeavour to bring our minds up to.
To the chief musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.
Psa 42:1-5
Holy love to God as the chief good and our felicity is the power of godliness, the very life and soul of religion, without which all external professions and performances are but a shell and carcase: now here we have some of the expressions of that love. Here is,
Psa 42:6-11
Complaints and comforts here, as before, take their turn, like day and night in the course of nature.